What IS idolatry?
By Elizabeth Prata
I recently wrote about the “Trad wife/Trad life” issue. I said that idolizing a lifestyle can replace genuine worship of biblical life standards. Anything can be an idol, including a lifestyle.
I decided to look into the topic of idolatry to understand it better. Also to make sure I was not misrepresenting it to you or to myself. When sin is on the table, our sinful nature wants to marginalize it, water it down, or ignore it. We always should strive for understanding, even when we think we already understand. The depths of God’s word never end.
I happened to have on hand a Free Grace Broadcaster from Mt. Zion Chapel Library. Chapel Library is a marvelous ministry, offered free to one and all. You can read online, or order a hard copy to be mailed to you for free. Yes, free. Their monthly magazine is based on one topic each month and contains essays from old-timey theologians and pastors of the past on that topic. In this Idolatry edition I found so much to bookmark and ponder and I’d only read 3 of the essays yet!
I constantly think on these things. I ask myself- is my blog my idol? Is my comfort an idol? Is my apartment and idol? I must always be vigilant. I’d read a startling thought in Spurstowe’s book “The Wiles of Satan.” One of satan’s strategies is to tempt us. We know that. But an even wilier strategy is to “cease to tempt, or to feign flight.” Have you ever thought of that? It’s to provoke our pride. We SEEM to have won the battle. We think, ‘Oh great, I’ve got this temptation licked! I got the victory of that sin!’ But no. Just as we release our guard, satan comes back! (Luke 4:13).
Within this Free Grace Broadcaster issue are so many nuggets, which I will share. Here is the link to the entire pamphlet if you care to read it online.
Martyn Lloyd Jones preached “Keep Yourself from Idols,” verse from 1 John 5:21. His was one of the articles in the pamphlet.
“Let me, therefore, put this in the form of three propositions. The first is that the greatest enemy that confronts us in the spiritual life is the worshipping of idols. The greatest danger confronting us all is not a matter of deeds or of actions, but of idolatry… What is idolatry? Well, an idol can be defined most simply in this way: an idol is anything in our lives that occupies the place that should be occupied by God alone…Anything that holds a controlling position in my life is an idol.”
“Of course, an idol may indeed be an actual idol. … idolatry may consist of having false notions of God. If I am worshipping my own idea of God and not the true and living God, that is idolatry… But let me go on to point out that idolatry can take many other forms. It is possible for us to worship our religion instead of worshipping God.”
“It is possible for us to worship not only our own religion but our own church, our own communion, our own religious body, our own particular community, our own particular sect, our own particular point of view—these are the things we may be worshipping.”
In this next excerpt on Idolatry, from “Soul Idolatry Excludes Men out of Heaven,” in The Works of David Clarkson, Vol. II. Clarkson (c. 1621-1686) we read that was a Puritan preacher, colleague of John Owen, and successor to Owen’s pulpit. Misunderstanding who God is can be idolatry:
“If either you do not think of God or think otherwise of Him than He is—think Him all mercy, not minding His justice; think Him all pity and compassion, not minding His purity and holiness; think of His faithfulness in performing promises, not at all minding His truth in execution of threatenings; think Him all love, not regarding His sovereignty—this is to set up an idol instead of God. Thinking otherwise of God than He has revealed Himself or minding other things as much or more than God is idolatry.” –end Clarkson
Charles Spurgeon notes that idols are not merely graven images but can be philosophies and concepts. Even though he wrote this in 1874, his warning is fresh today.
“I would say to you, beloved, in closing my observations upon this point: in the matter of your faith, be sure to keep yourselves from the idol of the hour. Some of us have lived long enough to see the world’s idols altered any number of times. Just now, in some professedly Christian churches, the idol is “intellectualism,” “culture,” “modern thought.” Whatever name it bears, it has no right to be in a Christian church, for it believes very little that appertains to Christ.”
…[T]he minister who goes into a pulpit and addresses people when he knows that he does not believe any of the doctrines that are dearer to them than their own lives. Yet, the moment the congregant is called to account for his unbelief, he cries out, “Persecution! Persecution! Bigotry! Bigotry!” A burglar, if I found him outside my bedroom door and held him till the policeman came, might consider me to be very bigoted because I did not care to have my property stolen by him and because I interfered with his liberty. So, in like manner, I am called bigoted because I will not allow a man to come and assail from my own pulpit the truths which are dearer to me than my life.”
“Believe me, my brethren, that the Church of Christ, if not the world, shall yet learn that the highest culture is a heart that is cultivated by divine grace; that the truest science is…Jesus Christ and Him crucified; and that the greatest thought and the deepest of all metaphysics are found at the foot of the cross; and that the men who will keep on simply and earnestly preaching the old-fashioned gospel, and the people who will stand fast in the old paths are they who will most certainly win the victory.” –end Spurgeon
John Calvin, in his The Institutes of the Christian Religion, famously said that the heart and mind of man is “a perpetual forge of idols.” (1:11.45) This has often been translated as an “factory of idols.”
We create idols for ourselves when we’re not paying attention. We create idols for ourselves when we are paying attention. We create idols for ourselves when we are asleep. We create idols for ourselves when we are awake. MLJ wrote of the 1 John 5:21 verse (Keep yourselves from idols), that those were very likely the last words John wrote. He said the point cannot be proved, but if those were the last or nearly last words John wrote, we must pay even closer attention, saying,
“The last words of all people are important, but the last words of great people are of exceptional importance, and the last words of an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ are of supreme importance…”
Keep. Yourselves. From. Idols.
